


Waking

by kiyala



Series: Toxic [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: angst_bingo, Depression, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiyala/pseuds/kiyala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire goes to therapy after attempting suicide, and meets Enjolras in the waiting room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking

**Author's Note:**

> Please pay attention to the tags; I don't want to trigger anybody by accident.

Grantaire wakes up to the harsh light of a hospital room and the steady beeping of medical equipment monitoring his vital signs. He feels like shit, and he can't get up. They've tied him down, so he can barely move.

But he's still stuck on the fact that _he woke up_ and fuck, he really can't do anything right, can he.

He hurts all over and he sighs quietly, shutting his eyes and letting it wash over him. He deserves it.

•••

"Grantaire. Did you hear me?"

"Uh huh." Grantaire keeps staring up at the ceiling. It's a smooth, even white. No brush marks. Pretty good, as far as ceilings go.

He's lying on his therapist's couch, which is no simple task when it's a single-seater, not designed to be lied down on at all. Grantaire has his head on one arm rest, his legs dangling over the other.

"What was the question?"

Valjean sighs in his patient way. "I asked how you feel now that you are living with Feuilly. Now that you have a place that actually feels like home."

"Right." Grantaire rubs a hand over his face. "Makes me hate everything just that little bit less. He never lets me do anything, though. I offer to cook and he won't even let me cut the damn vegetables. You try killing yourself once, and nobody trusts you with sharp things any more. Bahorel won't even back me up."

"Well, that's for a very good reason," Valjean tells him. "They're concerned, and I doubt Bahorel is willing to take any risks. Especially considering the way he found you."

The guilt that lances through Grantaire is a familiar one now. He's been feeling it ever since he found out.

The whole reason Grantaire is still alive is because Bahorel had spontaneously decided to drop by in the middle of the day. He's the one who found Grantaire, bleeding from the wrists and already unconscious. He'd kept quiet about it, intent on making sure Grantaire never found out. When one of the doctors had mentioned it in passing, right in front Grantaire, Bahorel very nearly punched him out. 

Bahorel doesn't hate Grantaire for it, even if Grantaire thinks he's completely within his rights to do so. It just means that now, Grantaire has context for the fact that Bahorel's eyes had been red-rimmed for days. It explains why Bahorel is fiercely protective of him now, and why he goes out of his way these days to keep his schedule as unpredictable as possible.

When Grantaire's idle thoughts about dying turned into actual planning, the first thing he'd decided was that when he did it, he didn't want to be found by anyone who cared about him, or who he cared about. He didn't want to be found at all until he was well and truly dead, so he'd picked a day when both of his parents wouldn't come home until late, and made no other plans for the day.

If not for Bahorel…

Well. Grantaire supposes that if not for Bahorel, if not for Feuilly and Bossuet and Joly and Jehan, Grantaire would still be feeling like he's lost somewhere underwater, unable to make sense of the rush of thoughts in his mind, let alone express them to somebody else.

It's been a month of weekly visits to Valjean and somedays, Grantaire even manages to get out of his bed on his own. It's been a week since he's given into the urge to self-harm, even if his options have been forcibly limited to digging his short, bitten nails into the meat of his palm. It still eases the self-hate a little, and there's definitely no shortage of that.

Grantaire clears his throat quietly. "I guess."

At the end of his hour, Grantaire walks out with a list of goals for the next week. He's broken it down into days and it's mostly _get out of bed_ and _eat at least two meals_. He's not the most ambitious person, but if he can manage everything on his list, he's going to consider the week a success. 

As Valjean opens the door, Grantaire finds he's already holding his breath in anticipation.

The gorgeous blond is still sitting in the single-seater couch that matches the one inside Valjean's office, just as he had been before Grantaire had gone in for his own appointment. The laptop that he'd been typing on before has been put away and he looks up, meeting Grantaire's eyes for the briefest of moments. Grantaire, clumsy and awkward at the best of times, looks away first, smiles later.

"I'll see you next week, Grantaire," Valjean says kindly, and Grantaire can only nod as he hurries away, nearly missing Cosette's smile from behind the receptionist desk. It's been a month and he still doesn't know the blond's name. Grantaire's last glimpse of him is the back of his head as he follows Valjean into his office.

Grantaire is fucking ridiculous. He spends his walk home reminding himself of this.

•••

"How was your week?" Valjean asks.

 _I had my first orgasm in two years_ , Grantaire doesn't say, _fucking my fist to the thought of the gorgeous man sitting just outside that door._

"Um." Grantaire picks at a loose thread at the hem of his hoodie. "Nothing special."

He's pretty sure Valjean can see right through him. He doesn't look up to confirm his suspicions, but it's obvious enough in the way Valjean hums in reply. Grantaire tries not to think about the way he'd shown up to his appointment a good fifteen minutes earlier today, spending the entire time trying to be subtle about the way he was watching the blond, already sitting in the waiting room and typing so quickly on his laptop that it looked like his fingers were dancing over the keyboard.

 _Dancing_. Fuck, he's pathetic.

"I won't push you to talk if you aren't willing to," Valjean tells him gently, "but you know I can't do anything unless you tell me what's going on."

Grantaire shakes his head. "It's stupid."

"Is this about Enjolras?" Valjean asks with a knowing look.

"Oh, so that's his name," Grantaire mumbles, not meeting Valjean's eyes.

"It wouldn't hurt to talk to him. You're sitting in the same waiting room before your appointment anyway. I think it would be good to expand your friends circle."

"I can't even talk to _Feuilly_ some days, even though I know him and like him," Grantaire points out. "How do I start talking to someone I don't even know?"

Valjean spends the rest of their hour brainstorming with Grantaire, coming up with ideas of how to initiate conversation. He makes Grantaire rehearse, and if it were anybody else, Grantaire would feel like an idiot. Valjean is encouraging, and makes Grantaire keep practicing until he's absolutely sure of what he's going to say.

Of course, when the hour is up and Grantaire is walking out of the door, all of the courage that he's managed to muster suddenly disappears. He's left frozen in the doorway, his eyes wide and palms sweating. Enjolras isn't even looking in his direction, but Grantaire can't move a single muscle.

Then, Valjean places a hand on Grantaire's back, speaking in a whisper, "Try next week."

With a small nod, Grantaire manages to breathe past the pounding of his heart. He puts one foot in front of the other, walking through the waiting room and to the door. He doesn't look at Enjolras, he doesn't look at Cosette, and he stops outside the door long enough to dig his notebook out of his bag. He flips to his list of goals for the coming week and at the top of the list of things to do for the day of his next appointment, he writes, _TALK TO ENJOLRAS._ He doesn't know if it's going to work, but it's worth a shot.

•••

He tells Feuilly about it throughout the week and he encourages Grantaire. He's just as supportive as Valjean and rehearses with Grantaire a little every day, so he at least knows how he's going to start the conversation with Enjolras. As far as Valjean and Feuilly know, he's only interested in making a new friend. He doesn't talk about how Enjolras sticks in his thoughts persistently, even though Grantaire knows nothing about him. He's just a semi-familiar face, and yeah, so maybe he's part of the reason Grantaire finds it easier to drag himself out of bed on days he's going to see Valjean, maybe he's one of the only things that makes Grantaire feel _anything_ other than the oppressive numbness that pushes down on his mind. Part of him knows that it's not a good idea to place so much importance on a conversation with someone, when Grantaire has absolutely no idea how it will go, how Enjolras will respond to him. Most of him doesn't care.

Enjolras is already sitting in his usual couch when Grantaire walks into the waiting room the next week. He's typing on his laptop, as always, and Grantaire nods in greeting to Cosette before he sits on one side of the three-seater couch against the wall, the furthest from Enjolras. He thinks he might hear Enjolras' typing slow down for a moment but then it speeds back up again and he looks busy, frowning at his screen, clearly working on something that has to be much more important than anything Grantaire might have to say to him.

He's had this argument with Valjean last week, and then with Feuilly several times after. They keep assuring him that it's worth a try anyway, that Enjolras will be able to get back to whatever he's working on after talking to Grantaire, that if it's something he can't bear to be interrupted with, he wouldn't be working on it in the waiting room to pass time before an appointment anyway.

There's twenty minutes until his appointment. He'd come early so that he would have the time to speak to Enjolras. All he needs to do now is actually bring himself to actually do it.

He clears his throat, so quietly that he barely hears it himself. He tries again, a little louder, and he's surprised by the way Enjolras immediately stops what he's doing and looks up.

Grantaire's stomach twists and his mind blanks. He can't remember any of the planned conversation starters he's spent the last week rehearsing. He wants to look away, to shake his head and shake off Enjolras' attention because now he has it, he's not entirely sure what to do.

Enjolras is the one who speaks first, lowering his laptop screen enough to make it clear that he's not going back to it immediately. "Hello."

"Hi." Grantaire attempts a smile. He doesn't want to know how it ends up looking, but Enjolras smiles back. Grantaire's heart might just beat right out of his chest.

"You're… Grantaire, right?" Enjolras closes his laptop entirely and sets it on the table in front of him. Grantaire can only nod. "I caught your name a couple of weeks ago, when Valjean called you in."

"What are you working on?" Grantaire blurts out, his prepared conversation topics coming back to him in a rush. He points in the vague direction of Enjolras' laptop. "Work? University assignments?"

"Not quite." Enjolras' smile _grows_. Whatever Grantaire was feeling before was nothing compared to the intensity of nervousness and happiness that he feels now. When Enjolras speaks now, he sounds enthusiastic and Grantaire strives to pay attention to every single word. "This isn't work, but I'm writing a speech. There's going to be a rally in two weeks' time on my university campus because we're protesting the lack of rights for queer students—"

"We?" Grantaire asks, curious.

"My friends and I," Enjolras clarifies. "We're the ones who organise the rallies, get the word out so people know what's going on, so we can all strive to make a change."

"A change," Grantaire repeats. Change is exactly what he's been striving for, since they let him out of hospital. Making changes to his life to stop himself from wanting to be done with it. Making changes to get his friends out of their constant state of high-alert, watching him just in case, _just in case_. Making changes to get himself out of his dark, horrible headspace. Most of the time, it feels like he's stagnating at square one. "And how's that working out for you?"

Enjolras' entire expression changes, closes up, and hey look, here's another thing Grantaire's fucked up.

"We've made changes to the way several university departments treat their students already," Enjolras says slowly, evenly. Maybe it's because Grantaire's so familiar with his own monsters, but he can sense Enjolras' too, hiding just below the surface. "Are you a student?"

Grantaire considers lying, to save face, but figures there's little point in that now. He opts for the truth. "Was an art student. I dropped out last year."

Enjolras' brows draw together then, like he wants to ask, but he continues, "Well, the Art Department had a severe power imbalance with all the tenured professors being men, the females not even given the opportunities—"

"I don't want to hear about the Art Department," Grantaire says quietly. Lately, he's been managing to stop stewing over his utter wreck of an academic life. The art block that had forced him out of his degree is still there—Grantaire knows that it's played a big part in getting him to where he is now—and being unable to get his thoughts out of his minds and into paintings is bad enough, he can barely stand thinking about everything it's cost him.

"The Mathematics Department then," Enjolras begins, and Grantaire physically flinches. Enjolras' brows draw together, like he's realised that he's just touched on a sore spot. But when Grantaire thinks he'll drop it, he clears his throat. "The Humanities—"

"Whatever you're trying to sell," Grantaire cuts him off, "I don't want to buy it."

Enjolras reels, like he's just been slapped. Then the look in his eyes goes from shocked to angry.

"You don't want to hear about our success because you don't want to _believe_ that we've been successful, is that it?" There's a challenge in his voice, like he wants Grantaire to take the bait, to argue with him. "You're just happy to sit there while nothing changes and nothing improves?"

"I'm just doubtful that your rallies and speeches will make any big differences—"

"Big changes start with _small ones_!" Enjolras snaps at him. "Are you too blind to see that?"

Grantaire is suddenly conscious of the fact that Cosette is sitting at her desk and staring at them. He glances in her direction and she looks uncomfortable. She meets his eyes but he can't stand the pity he sees and quickly looks back to Enjolras. The anger there is much more welcome.

"You're just schoolboys waving protest signs, aren't you?" Grantaire means for his words to provoke Enjolras' anger and they do, he can see it in the way the corners of Enjolras' mouth turn down, the way his eyes seem to _blaze_. Despite the fact that he's been fucking useless with a paintbrush for more than twelve months, Grantaire is suddenly gripped by the urge to paint the sight before him. "Or are you too _naive_ to see that?"

"What do you know?" Enjolras asks and now he's shouting. He's getting to his feet, looking down at Grantaire like he's the most hateful person in all of creation. "What the hell do you know, refusing to listen to anyone trying to help you understand things outside of the tiny box you live in? What are you even doing _here_ , if you don't believe that meaningful change is possible? Why are you—"

The door to Valjean's office opens, cutting Enjolras off. Valjean strides out and while his expression is calm, his eyes are so furious that Grantaire shrinks back into the couch even more than he already is. He stands between the two of them, turning to Enjolras.

"That is enough. I suggest you make use of your calming down strategies, Enjolras. Grantaire, in my office please. The appointment before yours was cancelled, so we may as well begin now. I'll meet you in there."

Grantaire gets up, shoving his hands in his pockets to hide the fact that they're shaking. He drops heavily into the couch in the office and curls up, bringing his knees to his chest and resting his head on them. He leans into the back of the couch and doesn't move, not when Valjean walks into the office a minute later, shutting the door behind him, and not for the entire hour. He refuses to cry, but he's helpless to the self-loathing that cuts through him, the voice at the back of his mind that tells him that he's _stupid_ for pinning so much importance on a conversation with a stranger. He doesn't move, doesn't speak, doesn't respond to Valjean's quiet attempts at conversation, to his reassurances that not everything is lost, to his apologies for pushing something when he wasn't certain it would work. He just focuses on breathing, on inhaling and exhaling, because that's all he can handle right now.

Valjean doesn't push, because he's wonderful, he's patient, and Grantaire is incredibly lucky to have a therapist who actually understands him, who knows when to just let him be. He sits there and waits, the kind expression on his face saying that it's perfectly fine if Grantaire wants to talk, but it's equally fine if he doesn't. He's grateful for it and says at much, his voice hoarse despite the fact that he _hasn't_ been crying. Valjean squeezes his shoulder comfortingly and is one step behind Grantaire as they walk to the door.

This time, Enjolras isn't sitting out in the waiting room the way he usually is. He's standing there, looking like he's scrambled to his feet he moment the door opened, and the look he fixes Grantaire with makes him freeze.

"I'm sorry," Enjolras says, before either Grantaire or Valjean can speak up. He crosses the distance between them, until he's standing right in front of Grantaire. "Our conversation—well, it went completely different in my head, I guess. Can we start over?"

"Um…"

"My name is Enjolras," he says, extending a hand. "Pleased to meet you."

Grantaire stands there and stares at the offered hand, his mind stubbornly refusing to move past the fact that _Enjolras imagined having conversations with him_. Valjean clears his throat politely and Grantaire snaps back to the present, taking Enjolras' hand. "Grantaire. Um, hi."

Enjolras' hand is warm in his and—well, this isn't the greatest start, but they're both standing there, smiling at each other, and it's much better than anything Grantaire expected.


End file.
